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If in such a partition of the unity, that which entered into
each participant were an entire- always identical with the first-
then, in the progressive severance, the firsts would become
numerous, each particular becoming a first: and then what
prevents these many firsts from reconstituting the collective
unity? Certainly not the bodies they have entered, for those
firsts cannot be present in the material masses as their Forms if
they are to remain identical with the First from which they come.
On the other hand, taking the part conceived as present in the
multiple to be simply a power [emanating from the First], at once
such a part ceases to be the unity; we have then to ask how these
powers come to be cut off, to have abandoned their origin; they
certainly have not moved away with no purpose in their movement.
Again, are those powers, entering the universe of sense, still
within the First or not?
If they are not, we have the absurdity that the First has been
lessened, disempowered, stripped of power originally possessed.
Besides, how could powers thus cut off subsist apart from the
foundations of their being? Suppose these powers to be at once
within the First and elsewhere; then the universe of sense
contains either the entire powers or parts of them; if parts of
powers, the other parts are There; if entires, then either the
powers There are present here also undivided- and this brings us
back to an identity omnipresent in integral identity- or they are
each an entire which has taken division into a multiplicity of
similars so that attached to every essence there is one power
only- that particularly appropriated to it- the other powers
remaining powers unattached: yet power apart from Being is as
impossible as Being apart from power; for There power is Being or
something greater than Being.
Or, again, suppose the powers coming Thence are other than their
source- lesser, fainter, as a bright light dwindles to a dim- but
each attached to its essence as a power must always be: such
secondary powers would be perfectly uniform and at once we are
forced to admit the omnipresence of the one same power or at the
least the presence- as in one and the same body- of some
undivided identity integral at every point.
And if this is the case with a particular body, why not with the
entire universe?
If we think of the single power as being endlessly divided, it is
no longer a power entire; partition means lessening of power;
and, with part of power for part of body, the conditions of
consciousness cease.
Further, a vestigial cut off from its source disappears- for
example, a reflected light- and in general an emanant loses its
quality once it is severed from the original which it reproduces:
just so the powers derived from that source must vanish if they
do not remain attached to it.
This being so, where these powers appear, their source must be
present with them; thus, once more, that source must itself be
omnipresent as an undivided whole.
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